History’s Verdict - On Iraq and WW II

[DC09]

About this time 60 years ago, six weeks after the Normandy beach landings, Americans were dying in droves in France. We think of the 76-day Normandy campaign of summer and autumn 1944 as an astounding American success — and indeed it was, as Anglo-American forces cleared much of France of its Nazi occupiers in less than three months. But the outcome was not at all preordained, and more often was the stuff of great tragedy. Blunders were daily occurrences — resulting in 2,500 Allied casualties a day. In any average three-day period, more were killed, wounded, or missing than there have been in over a year in Iraq.

Pre-invasion intelligence — despite ULTRA and a variety of brilliant analysts who had done so well to facilitate our amphibious landings — had no idea of what war in the hedgerows would be like. How can you spend months spying out everything from beach sand to tidal currents and not invest a second into investigating the nature of the tank terrain a few miles from the beach? The horrific result was that the Allies were utterly unprepared for the disaster to come — and died by the thousands in the bocage of June and July.

Everything went wrong in the days after June 6, and 60 years later the carnage should still make us weep. The army soon learned that their light Sherman tanks were no match for Nazi Panthers and Tigers. Hundreds of their "Ronson-lighters" — crews and all — went up in smoke. Indeed, 60 percent of all lost Shermans were torched by single shots from enemy Panzers. In contrast, only one in three of the Americans' salvos even penetrated German armor.

Prewar America had the know-how to build big, well-armored tanks, with diesel engines, wide tracks, and low silhouettes. Yet General George Marshall had deliberately chosen lighter, cheaper designs — the idea being that thousands of mass-produced, easily maintained 32-ton Shermans could run over enemy infantry before encountering a rarer, superior 43-ton Panther or 56-ton Tiger. Should he have been removed for such naiveté, which led to thousands of American dead? Whom to blame?

Similar blunders ensured that Americans had inferior anti-tank weapons, machine guns, and mortars when they met the seasoned Wehrmacht. On the Normandy battlefield itself, on at least three occasions, faulty communications, tactical breakdowns, bad intelligence, and simple operational laxity resulted in Americans blown apart by their own heavy bombers as they were trying to facilitate breakouts. Almost as many Allied soldiers were casualties in a collective few hours of misplaced bombing than all those killed so far in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Generals Eisenhower and Bradley probably miscalculated German intentions at Argentan, and thus allowed thousands of veteran Germans to escape the Falaise Gap in August. Tens of thousands of these reprieved Panzers would regroup to kill thousands more Americans later that year. Whom to blame?

The subsequent Battle of the Bulge was a result of a colossal American intelligence failure. Somehow 250,000 Nazis, right under the noses of the Americans, were able to mount a counteroffensive with absolute surprise. For all of our own failure to account for the missing WMD, so far an enemy army of 250,000 has not, as it once did in December 1945, assembled unnoticed a few miles from our theater base camps. Whom to blame?

We know about the horrific German massacres of American prisoners, but little about instances of Americans' shooting German captives well before the Battle of the Bulge. Such murdering was neither sanctioned by American generals nor routine — but nevertheless it was not uncommon in the heat of battle and the stress of war. No inquiry cited Generals Hodges, Patton, or Bradley as responsible for rogue soldiers shooting unarmed prisoners. Whom to blame?

The catastrophes did not end after the Normandy campaign. More Americans were killed between December 1944 and January 1945 — when we wrongly pushed back the bulge by confronting it head-on rather than slicing it off far to its rear — than all those lost previously in the months since the D-Day landings. Germans had heavy overcoats and white camouflage; GIs froze and were easy targets in the snow with their dark uniforms. Whom to blame?

I could go on, but the point is clear. War is a horrendous experience in which the side that wins commits the fewest mistakes, rather than no errors at all.

In the short period between June and August 1944, military historians can adduce hundreds of examples of American amateurism, failed intelligence, incompetent logistics, and strategic blundering — but not enough of such errors to nullify the central truth of the Normandy invasion. A free people and its amazing citizen army liberated France and went on in less than a year to destroy veteran Nazi forces in the West, and to occupy Germany to end the war. Good historians, then, keep such larger issues in mind, even as they second-guess and quibble with the tactical and strategic pulse of the battlefield.

We should do the same. Errors were committed in the Iraqi campaign as they always are in war and its aftermath. Saddam didn't use WMDs as we had expected — neither did Hitler, and as a result thousands of GIs carried bothersome and superfluous gas masks across France and Germany for nearly a year.

We should probably have shot the looters who wrecked Iraq and smashed thugs like those in Fallujah last spring, when they were still in their vulnerable chrysalis stages. Iraqis should have been far more prominent in governance and on television almost immediately. Aid was tied up and delayed — as postwar goodwill ebbed away in the heat. All this and more we now know from hindsight, even as we suspect that had we sent 400,000 troops, shot looters, blasted the killers in Fallujah, properly patrolled the borders, and kept the Baathist army intact, the New York Times would now be railing even more vehemently against U.S. overkill, brutality, puppet governments, and security at the expense of social justice.

Full Article

Quite an interesting read.

[wunarmdscissor]

About this time 60 years ago, six weeks after the Normandy beach landings, Americans were dying in droves in France. We think of the 76-day Normandy campaign of summer and autumn 1944 as an astounding American success

I was unaware America alone liberated France.

One small mention of "American-Anglo" how typical.#

The arrogance of such pieces of poor "journalism" makes me absolutley sick. Even just the wording of the article suggests it was america alone who fought

Ok thats the distorion of WW2 part out of the road.

You cannot compare the wars.

Now onto its poor content and flimsy links.

These are from totally different times.

We are supposed to have moved on in civilised terms not just frozen still.

We arent in a age where there were such clear divides for example human rights differences for blacks and whites.

We are supposed to be above the beleifs as a people that "its ok to shoot " certain types of people

Thats for those reasons alone you cannot compare the two.

Moreover the german people on a widespread scale supported and lauded theyre madman leader and activley co-operated in the war effort.

The iraqis did not.

I could also go on.

Wasnt an interstin read.

There is no comparison, the technology then and civilisation was different and it was insulting to every other nation who lost millions in the liberation of europe.

[Cufflink]

I agree with Wun on every point.

As usual, Hitler wasn't a baddy until Pearl Harbour, and D-Day was almost totally a US venture, despite 3 of the five beaches being tasked to Commonwealth forces.

I honestly don't think there are any hard comparisons between the two campaigns.

I'm also suspect of any article from a hard-right site (as I would be of an article from a hard-left site). Not hard-right? Check out the Saddam-style playing cards featuring 'liberals.' FFS

[wunarmdscissor]

thanks cufflink.

I know by your posts previously that you are unlike me seen as a voice of reason wen it comes topics like this.

By this I mean not consdered a "lefty surrender monkey".

So hopefully your commenting on this will carry more weight with the posters i have regular verbal jousts with,

I just hope that this will at least make people think about posting these types of posts.

Edited July 16, 2004 by wunarmdscissor

[wunarmdscissor]

just checked out the site.

Its so right-wing its nearly left. lol

[Cufflink]

thanks cufflink.

I know by your posts previously that you are unlike me seen as a voice of reason wen it comes topics like this.

By this I mean not consdered a "lefty surrender monkey".

I think anyone who considered you a lefty is not reading your posts, Wun.

Your views are pragmatic and reasoned, and in discussions on defence, you are also rightly proud of our armed forces, and their sacrifices. I'd never mark you down as a lefty, despite what others more to the right may think.

I agree about the article. The writer appears at best ignorant, at worst, an offensive ****.

[wunarmdscissor]

Thanks a lot for that.

[Mekorig]

i dont remember where i read a very interesting phrase.....the political spectrum isnt an spectrum, but a circle. Hard right wing extremist are almost the same has the hard left-wing extremist. Its their opinoin and the rest are traitors or such.

[Talon]

Anglo-American forces

Yeah... cause we all know Canada, Scotland, Ulster, Wales and the Free Polish / French had nothing to do with the Liberation of France

[wunarmdscissor]

Anno talon. Its a disgrace , this is why we have to try an point it out at every opportunity.

Even if we shouldnt have to.

[Fluffybunny]

Yeah... cause we all know Canada, Scotland, Ulster, Wales and the Free Polish / French had nothing to do with the Liberation of France

I think that the public education system in the US does a horrible diservice to the rest of the world when it comes to the reporting of WWII. While the US did do much to help liberate France, we were not alone and could not have done it alone.

Very few people realise how close the allies came to actually losing the war, and how many other countries sacrificed so much to fight in the war. There are so many amazing stories that have come out of that period of time, stories that are dieing off as the veterans pass away.

It seems to me like the older generations that experienced the war have a good idea of who did what, but todays younger folks in the US seem to think that the war was the United States(with a couple of other countries) against Germany. Don't even bother to mention that japan had a role in the war as well...

[Talon]

Don't even bother to mention that japan had a role in the war as well...

Which is funny cause Japan was America's main rival in WW2

[Stamford]

Excellent points by all (except the the first one, that is).

If we are going to compare wars, we might as well compare the Spanish Armarda to the Iraq War for all the relevance this has.